At least since radical French Enlightenment thinkers declared their intention to strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest, the Left has had a reputation for hostility toward religion — what Karl Marx infamously called “the opiate of the masses.” To be clear, there are plenty of good reasons to be critical of established religions, especially those whose ministers seem determined to sell their souls to help the political right defend hierarchy and inequality, or who produce Prager U videos defending faith traditions by turning them into banal self-help bromides worthy of Dr Phil. But one consequence of this reputation for antagonism toward religion has been to give credence to conservative accusations that the Left is indifferent to what socialist theologian Paul Tillich called the spiritual issues of “highest concern.”

In recent years, a number of left-wing thinkers have made efforts at constructive dialogue with Christianity. Philosopher Martin Hägglund’s This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom engages with the thought of Saint Augustine and Søren Kierkegaard to make the case for a secular approach to questions of existential meaning. Hägglund argues that the finitude of human life is a condition for our spiritual freedom — a freedom that is profoundly constrained by capitalist social relations. Self-described Christian atheist Slavoj Žižek and radical Thomist Alasdair MacIntyre have stressed the deep alignment between the Christian emphasis on freedom and equality for all and the social ambitions of the Left. And the birth of organizations like the Institute for Christian Socialism suggests the possibility of a broader reinvigoration of religious socialist movements in the United States.

Alexandre Lefebvre’s warm and inspiring Liberalism as a Way of Life represents another attempt at addressing questions of spiritual meaning, this one from a left-liberal perspective. Lefebvre observes that modern liberalism has often distinguished between the “right” and the “good.” Liberalism so understood maintains that the goal of a liberal state should be to establish the institutional and legal conditions for free individuals to pursue their private vision of the good life without interference.